


Body in Revolt

by Mistheart101



Series: Dead by Maniac (JTHM/DBD AU) [2]
Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Johnny the Homicidal Maniac
Genre: Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Death, F/M, Torture, bear in mind i put in the ship stuff but mostly it's nny pining and not comprehending feelings, i dont know if there's a specific tag for someone dying over and over, i mean. sort of? the entity messes with him a bit, losing one's sense of self
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 06:13:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,307
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28505772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mistheart101/pseuds/Mistheart101
Summary: There's ways to escape the Entity's Realm.Or to at least secure the escape of someone else, someone dear, at great personal cost.
Relationships: Johnny "Nny" C./Devi D.
Series: Dead by Maniac (JTHM/DBD AU) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2088057
Kudos: 4





	Body in Revolt

**Author's Note:**

> I've been kicking this thing around for like. Ages? And now I've got this much wrangled up to actually put up the writing.  
> Some of y'all may be familiar with the SEN au already. And if you aren't, the basic rundown is it's a situation where Nny and Devi somehow piss off the Entity, it's about to inflict punishment, and Nny pulls a whole "I'll swear complete loyalty if you let her go." So the Entity, surprisingly, does. As for what it does to Nny, well. That's what this chapter is for!  
> If you want to see art for it though, then here: [Here's the art for it over on Sally's (devnny's) blog.](https://devnny.tumblr.com/tagged/sen-au/chrono)  
> Also the fic title is from Rufus Rex's song Body in Revolt.

Nny was alone. Or, alone as he could be in this situation, considering the Entity made up the entirety of this place.

That, and it had just sent Devi back to the real world. Or at least he **_hoped_ **it did. He couldn’t bear the thought of that being a trick, that it had actually gotten rid of her.

He was unceremoniously shaken out of his thoughts when one of the two limbs the Entity had above him promptly descended and impaled him through the back. It bent and lifted itself towards the “ceiling,” which was... Uncomfortably high up. Nny’s weak struggles did nothing to slow its ascent, and he noticed with growing dread that a pit was opening in the floor below, lined with more spiked limbs.

Before he could even open his mouth to beg or bargain, the impaling claw withdrew itself, leaving him to plummet directly into the pit.

The pain of impact barely registered in the split second he could feel it before dying.

He awoke at some point afterwards, body now crammed into what he presumed was an underground cavity. Couldn’t see much of anything; the only light was from cracks that had a faint orange glow.

This was familiar.

When he’d first been taken by the Entity, he hadn’t exactly cooperated with its desires. It tortured obedience out of him, and this felt like a similar setup.

Being stuck here, though, made him think worryingly of that one stage magician trick with the barrel and the swords--

A thought he was made to regret having when one of the Entity’s pointed limbs emerged from the rocks above him and stabbed into his back.

There was a brief feeling of confusion when he realized it wasn’t a full impalement, which prompted another painful interruption- something bursting _out_ of his back, accompanied by the sounds of flesh and muscle tearing apart and his own ragged, agonized screaming.

It only intensified when his goddamn _teeth_ started to shift around, more growing in, sharper and thinner than before.

The immediate, overwhelming physical trauma either killed him again or knocked him out like a light, because he came to a while later, whole body aching.

He was pretty sure he had some new wounds, considering he was bleeding more than usual. ...Which itself was a concerning observation to make so casually. 

As the Entity’s punishments and torture continued, that only become more frequent; detachedly noting new things. One such noticed thing, which would have been concerning if he were more coherent, was that he stopped picking up the smell of blood. He supposed it made sense, considering overexposure. 

There was also the mental tally of the various ways he’d been subjected to death. He was pretty sure he’d drowned in his own blood at one point. 

And not in the sense that some major internal bleeding was seeping into his lungs, no (though that probably happened too, if he was being honest), it’s more that his own shed blood from continued deaths and revivals was collected by the Entity, which then held him down and drowned him with it.

Not a pleasant experience, to put it lightly.

Similarly terrible things happened, leaving him half-wondering if it was drawing from the shit _he’d_ done to people.

He’d be indignant if he weren’t less than half the man he used to be.

In the midst of it all, he could feel-- no, not feel, more like he had the loosest sense-- that the Entity was doing something to his head, his _brain_ , his **_memories_**.

It was like fumbling in the dark of one’s living room, expecting everything to be where it should be, but it’s not. He knew things should be there, but not _what_ , and that absence terrified him to his core.  
Not like a faint memory that one could grab and pull into focus to examine and recollect more fully.

Just a blank stretch of nothing.  
And he didn’t know if it was just being blocked by the Entity, or if it was all gone entirely.

He, or rather the last vestiges of coherent thought left rattling in a corner of his skull, wondered at what point the Entity’s intent shifted from breaking his spirit to simply venting its frustrations towards him and Devi.

It hardly mattered, though. It was still achieving its goal, still walling away more and more of his sense of self, the tattered identity born of half-memories, ramblings and musings, and what little social interactions he’d had that _didn’t_ involve murder and torture.

Eventually, when he was barely himself anymore, he blinked, and was suddenly in the trial grounds. His body ached, blood running from the myriad wounds littered across it.

Then the Entity’s incoherent whispers, reminding him of his purpose. Hunt. Sacrifice. Or else.

Or else what?

The consequence for failure was a threat with half its meaning buried alongside his former self.

But a threat is a threat, and he knew he couldn’t afford to fail and disappoint the Entity, even if he didn’t fully understand what it might do if he didn’t meet its requirements.

The Entity-like arms crossed against his back stretched out, finally having the space to do so, fingers straining as the Maniac pulled a cruel, wicked knife from his jacket.

He was fairly certain it wasn’t originally his, but that hardly mattered. It was his _now_ , and he had to put it to good use.

  
  
As the Entity likely expected, the string of trials the newly changed Maniac went through could best be described as complete slaughters. No escapes, only cold, brutal, wrathful carnage by the hands of its formerly most troublesome Killer.

There was an eventual lull between trials, the Maniac left to his own devices in his decrepit house.  
It was more barren than it had been previously, but he barely recognized that fact. Instead, he stumbled to his room, muscle memory guiding him over to the mirror.

Reflections were still something he understood, and there was enough latent sense to understand he looked different. 

Or did he? Was this not how he always looked?

The cuts and slashes across his face were sluggishly bleeding, refusing to clot. He opened his mouth, noting that his teeth were thin and sharp. Then, of course, were the arms that had torn a hole through his shirt and coat in their eagerness to partake in the earlier violence. Now that he had a moment to truly stop and examine them, he noted the sharpness of their fingers, the general resemblance to the Entity's own limbs employed during trials.

The overall sight felt unfamiliar, but something insistently whispered that it was fine and normal and this was how it was.

There was no evidence to truly make him think otherwise, and so he believed the whispers of the Entity.

Thus was the routine created anew, long stretches of trials with small breaks in between.

At times, an indescribable bone-deep ache would drive the Maniac to claw his way onto the roof, only to stare at the cold, distant, beautiful moon, weeping tears he didn’t even notice, until the Entity’s fog rolled in once more.

While the deeper meaning was locked away in the back of his mind, he could comprehend the mournful longing as a feeling. Not the specific reason, just... The simultaneous melancholy and yearning that filled him at the sight of it.  
Any attempt on his part to unravel _why_ would simply hasten the Entity’s fog, distracting him out of picking away at the walls in his memory by throwing him into a trial.

That was always its response to him having moments of near-clarity, wrecking Nny’s focus with pain and blood and violence until he was once again more beast than man.

Things were going to be like that for a long, long while.


End file.
